There is a great exodus taking place all around me on the farm. Every morning that I am in the field I hear them, the wild geese flying south for the winter. They are passing through by the thousands, over head and to the side. I hear them in the distance and always take a moment from my harvesting to look up and observe them as they fly by me. So many of them the sound of their wings can be frightening.
When I was in Israel a good friend gave me a wonderful present, a beautiful poem she inscribed on a treasured rock. The poem was Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"
In dedication to my new field companions and their journey I am posting it here.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
